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Coins, Currency, and Medals

The Museum possesses one of the largest numismatic collections in the world. The collections include over 1 million objects, comprising coins, medals, decorations, and pieces of paper money. Among the many great rarities here are some of the world’s oldest coins, created 2,700 years ago. But the collection also includes the latest innovations in electronic monetary exchange, as well as beads, wampum, and other commodities once used as money. A special strength lies in artifacts that illustrate the development of money and medals in the United States. The American section includes many rare and significant coins, such as two of three known examples of the world's most valuable coin, the 1933 double eagle $20 gold piece.

This Flowing Hair Liberty plaster model, designed by U.S. Mint Chief Engraver Frank Gasparro, is an enlarged prototype for the "new mini dollar" of 1978. Gasparro's allegorical Liberty displays a free-spirited young woman similar to the design of Benjamin Franklin's Libertas Americana Medal in 1783 and the cents of 1793—1808. Although the Flowing Hair Dollar design was Gasparro's first choice for the new dollar coin, Congress rejected this design.

When Gasparro was satisfied with his drawing for a new coin, he produced a version of the drawing in clay. Next, a plaster model, or galvano, was made using the clay version as a mold. When the Dwight D. Eisenhower dollar was manufactured in 1971, the Mint engraver used a plaster model on a lathe to scale the design down to coin size and reproduce the image onto a master hub. Today artists may still make plaster galvanoes to demonstrate their coin design in three dimensions, but the manufacture of the hub is done with computers. Images are scanned onto a computer, and software reduces the object and carves the hub.